1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to computer systems and, more particularly, to scrolling of displayed information in a way which reflects the relevance of the material at a particular point in the scroll.
2. Description of Related Art
Scrollbars are used in various software programs to enable a user to view different portions of long files. Some software programs add limited information to the scrollbar thumb. For example, some word processing software will display the current page number while the user is scrolling. However, this information does not indicate the relevance of the content visible at the scrolled location.
Programs and procedures that can find and mark relevant content in a document are known in the art. For example, many World Wide Web search engines, when responding to an information retrieval query, mark all occurrences of terms from the query in the documents with an HTML tag (typically STRONG).
The Problems
When scrolling through long document files users have no way of knowing where in the file relevant content is located. This requires users to stop scrolling at regular intervals to view the content to determine its relevance. This problem commonly occurs in browsers, in information retrieval systems, and in word processing programs.
The invention provides methods, apparatus, systems and computer program products which change a display of information, such as changing the appearance of a scroll bar thumb to reflect the amount of relevant content which would be visible in a display window at the current location of the scrolling thumb on the scrollbar. When a document is retrieved, it is examined for the presence of relevance markers which can be used to identify terms in the search query used to retrieve the document. These relevance markers can be applied either at the server prior to downloading to a user or at the user, if the search engine is not so equipped. Various algorithms can be used to map relevant content to a representation of the amount of relevant content in a way which can be perceived by a user.
The invention relates to a computer having a graphical user interface providing a visual indication of the presence of relevant information at different scrolling locations in a document.
The invention also relates to a computer configured to submit an information retrieval query, store the terms of that query in said memory and add one or more relevance markers to information retrieved in response to that query.
The invention also relates to a method of displaying information retrieved in response to a query by determining the amount of relevant information at a particular scrolling location and modifying a system attribute to indicate that amount of relevant information.
The invention also relates to a method of retrieving information by submitting a query to a search engine, retrieving information from said search engine in response to the query; and if information retrieved from said search engine contains no relevance markers, adding relevance markers to the information retrieved.
The invention also relates to a method of identifying relevant information retrieved in response to a query by identifying query terms in the information retrieved and inserting a relevance marker adjacent each query term identified.
The invention also relates to a method of identifying the amount of relevant information at a particular scrolling location by counting a number of relevance markers contained in the information displayed or that would be displayed at that location, and altering a system attribute to reflect said number.
The invention also relates to systems and computer program products for carrying out these techniques.
The foregoing and other features, aspects and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description of the present invention when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.